6/11/2023 0 Comments Katherine dunn author![]() ![]() Their reason: “What greater gift could you offer your children than an inherent ability to earn a living just by being themselves?” When times get hard, he and his wife Crystal Lil decide to breed their own freak show by “experimenting with illicit and prescription drugs, insecticides, and eventually radioisotopes.” “Geek Love” tells the story of a traveling family circus, Binewski’s Fabulon-Aloysius Binewski, proprietor. The book was Katherine Dunn’s “Geek Love,” and in the review I wrote for The Seattle Times in March, 1989, I called it “one of the most extraordinary American novels of this decade, a fantasy as opulently grotesque and alive as Gunter Grass’ ‘The Tin Drum’ or Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast triology.” My feeling, even at the time, was: I am never going to forget this. The novel I was reading was extraordinary and it was somehow making the light around me extraordinary too. The first thing I recall is the quality of the afternoon light in my Capitol Hill apartment. I hope this essay does a little justice to her and to our friendship. Katherine was a good friend to my husband John and me, and we miss her terribly. ![]() After sending it out to a few editors who weren't up for publishing it - the length was a problem - I put it in a digital "desk drawer" for a few years. ![]() I wrote this piece shortly after Katherine Dunn's death in May of 2016. ![]()
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